The
questions Foedora raised showed a certain keenness of intellect. I
took a pleasure in deciding some of them in her favor, in order to
flatter her; then I confuted her feminine reasoning with a word, and
roused her curiosity by drawing her attention to an everyday matter
--to sleep, a thing so apparently commonplace, that in reality is an
insoluble problem for science. The countess sat in silence for a
moment when I told her that our ideas were complete organic beings,
existing in an invisible world, and influencing our destinies; and for
witnesses I cited the opinions of Descartes, Diderot, and Napoleon,
who had directed, and still directed, all the currents of the age.
"So I had the honor of amusing this woman; who asked me to come to see
her when she left me; giving me _les grande entrees_, in the language of
the court. Whether it was by dint of substituting polite formulas for
genuine expressions of feeling, a commendable habit of mine, or
because Foedora hailed in me a coming celebrity, an addition to her
learned menagerie; for some reason I thought that I had pleased her. I
called all my previous physiological studies and knowledge of woman to
my aid, and minutely scrutinized this singular person and her ways all
evening.
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